After five-plus years and 58 shows, a Chicago musical-comedy gem bids farewell. Tomorrow night at the Hideout, Shame That Tune wraps its run of shaming Chicagoans on a monthly basis via familiar pop melodies. Begun in 2010 by piano man and former Baby Teeth front man Abraham Levitan and Outer Minds drummer and Reader contributor Brian Costello, the bizarro game show is a kind of self-inflicted musical roast presented in a wayward style that’s only slightly similar to This Is Your Life, and is also accompanied by a Wheel of Fortune-like “shame wheel.”
Costello went on to explain the simple (almost deliberately clichéd) reasons for ending Shame That Tune:
“I don’t know what the hell I’m going to tell. People ask me all the time, ‘Well, what are your stories?’ I don’t know. I’ve repressed it all with Irish-Catholic guilt. My whole life is shame.”
